Happy 2019!

Dear reader, it is that time of the year once again. 2019 is almost here!

I am certain that we have all had a very fascinating 2018. I know that I and my family have gone through a number of interesting events.

I hope that I have been able to share a number of news events with you through my stories on my Blogsite, dear reader. 

I will try very hard to report 2019 events that I find significant as part of my stories on here. 

From my wife, Marsha, my kids, Michael and Melissa, and me:

HAVE A GREAT 2019 NEW YEAR!!!

Here Come More Stories

I happened to see this story in the Windsor Star and I must admit that it was quite a shocker:

“Larry Horwitz, the long-time and high-profile chairman of the Downtown Windsor Business Improvement Association, is out after members voted for a near-complete turnover of the organization’s board of directors.” (Taylor Campbell, Windsor Star, December 7, 2018) 

I must admit that the story did not tell me very much about why Mr. Horwitz did not win again after he has been head of the Board for so long. However, just before the new year, he was removed as were many other members of the Board.

Will the new Board accomplish something? I think we will just have to wait and see.

There, my short comment about a very short story. I must admit that I really wondered why this all took place but it does not appear as if I will ever find out.

Should I have gone around to try and figure out what happened? After all why would so many members of the Board be replaced? Were the people who are now members of the Board carrying out some plan that they had developed in the past for some reason? Could I gain anything of interest that I should write about?

I really have no idea what the answers are and, in this instance, I don’t intend to find out.  

Now let me write some stories that interest me for you to take a look at.

WILL TRADE UNIONS SURVIVE

Could it be that our economic system is changing so drastically that we don’t really understand the consequences even now. Take a look at this comment:

“The latest battle to save thousands of auto jobs in Ontario is but one of many Canada’s largest private sector union will likely have to fight as automation, technology and globalization increasingly change the face of manufacturing, experts say…

“This trend has been happening for the last 20 years,” said Anil Verma, an industrial relations professor at the University of Toronto. “It’s not a huge surprise. Of course, it doesn’t reduce the hurt and the damage. But if I were in the auto industry in any capacity I would be wanting to look for an exit strategy.” (Canadian Press, November 28, 2018) 

I strongly urge you to take a look at the story because it shows the changes that will happen in this country in the near future. The real difficulty is that most of us don’t really understand what will happen so soon in our economy. When it actually happens, that is when most of us will understand it. The problem is that it may be a negative economic impact on so many people so quickly.

The important question that people will be asking these days is what is going to happen now to people in Canada who work for GM who will be losing their jobs here. For us in the Windsor area, we need to wonder what will happen at the Chrysler plant here. Of course, it won’t happen now but it may happen sooner than people think.

Oh sure, the head Unionists will rant and rave to try to get the automobile leaders to change their position but will they be successful? According to the Ontario Premier, he doesn’t think so:

“Ontario Premier Doug Ford accused the union leader — and others who have publicly criticized GM, including Trudeau and Opposition Leader Andrea Horwath — of making empty promises.

When we hear any of these people talking, all we hear is a bunch of powerful people grandstanding, selling false hope,” he said Wednesday. “In private, they know the GM plant isn’t coming back.”

The reality seems to be that we have to accept that the changes in the economy that are coming so quickly will result in changes in the labour movement and who works where doing what. We just do not seem to have an alternative no matter what anyone says.

Accordingly, what has to happen now to minimize the downturn that will result in such a significant change in our economy. Moreover, what has to be done in the economy to provide alternatives for people to continue to work in order to continue to earn a significant income in the future that matches what they make today.

RESIGN FROM MASSE

That is what Councillor Kieran McKenzie just did after he was elected as Councillor in the municipal election. He used to work for MP Brian Masse. He did so for this reason:

“I’ve just chosen this path. It removes the greatest amount of uncertainty and removes the greatest potential for other problems,” said McKenzie.” (Brian Cross, Windsor Star, December 3, 2018) 

It should be interesting to see what happens in reality however. Is there a “clear and identifiable break” which we will recognize.

Can you imagine the pressure that he would be under if a matter raised by Masse came to the attention of City Council and a vote had to be taken on it. Would he vote at all? Could he vote now if he had worked for Mr. Masse on this matter in the past? Based on his past experience, even though he resigned from Masse, would he dare vote in favour of what Masse wants even if he did not work on it or would he have the nerve to oppose what his former boss brought forward?

I noticed on Facebook that Masse and McKenzie are still both “friends” of each other.

The interesting matter in this as far as I am concerned is what is Mr. McKenzie going to do in the future. Now that he is “political” by being elected municipally, one wonders if he’s going to run provincially or federally in our area. If he does, for which party will he run? It might be okay to run Provincially for the NDP but federally, should it be the same Party for which Mr. Masse is a member and where McKenzie used to work before? We will just have to wait and see.

Hands-Free Typing with Dragon Home

This is something that I have been able to do well for many, many years. After all, I never really learned how to type when I was in high school. The number of people who were taught to do so at that time were relatively few and only attended special “office” classes so they could get a job once they graduated from school.

Nope, I taught myself how to do so at home. My recollection is that I was not such a bad typist at the time. Somehow, by teaching myself, I learned how to do so. I could use both my full hands and not have to look at the screen when I typed. I also believe that I typed relatively quickly as well.

Unfortunately, as time went on, that skill of mine pretty much disappeared. 

Luckily for me, when I went to work for a law firm, I did not have to type anything because I had my own secretary who did all of that for me. All that I had to do was dictate something and then she typed it out fully. It was when I stopped working for others and started doing things for myself that I needed to learn again how to use a typewriter.

This time around I did not do as good a job as before. Using both of my full hands was replaced with just using a two finger job, one on each hand. Naturally, I had to look at the keyboard as well to find the key to type. I did all right but I was not particularly quick at what I was doing. Moreover, it took me a longer time to complete an article. I discovered that there was, in fact, a number of programs that permitted people to dictate whatever they wanted to say in a document that they were preparing.

For what I needed to do, and that included typing a lot of articles, I chose to use a dictation system. The one I used was “Dragon Dictate” to do so. It is now called “DRAGON HOME” and is offered by Nuance Communications, Inc. I am using Version 15 for this article. Of course, Nuance has other Word Processing products that you should consider especially if you are in other groups such as the legal one. After all, lawyers do a lot of dictating of documents and correspondence don’t we!

Now I used a lot of their older products and I was quite happy with them. In other words, I used a variety of their “Versions.” Each time that I got a new version I enjoyed the better advantages that I had. The product just seemed to get better every time.

Then, I just tried DRAGON HOME “Version 15.” Let me tell you what happened the first time that I dictated a sentence. Truly, I almost got blown out of my chair!

I did not dictate generally at a low speed when I was dictating to a secretary. I only dictated slowly when I was on here with the older Dictation products so that they could keep up with me. I had to go slow because unfortunately they had to go slow as well as my sentences were being transcribed. Not this time. Literally, as I finished my last word, I saw that DRAGON HOME was close to finishing typing in type exactly the words which I had just dictated! In other words, I did not have to sit here and watch the dictation finally come to an end. In fact, “DRAGON HOME” believes on its website:

“Dictate documents, send email, search the web, and more - 3x faster than typing.”

I could not believe what I saw. I consider that to be a huge advantage this time. It is really remarkable seeing what I’ve just said set out in print so that it can be corrected immediately if required. Its huge advantage is that everything is done so quickly and so well. Whatever I say immediately gets printed. I don’t care what anyone else thinks, but to me that is quite an advantage with this product. It just saves time and effort on the part of the person who is dictating whatever is being done.

Just think about it. It means that something is being typed so much more quickly than I could ever hope for. If you want to understand what “quickly” means think of this. I am talking about how quickly I can actually type a sentence. It takes me a fair bit of time to do a sentence because I am a terrible typist. Now, DRAGON HOME can finish that sentence in a period of time that is almost exactly the same amount of time that I can dictate something. It is much faster than the previous dictation systems that I used and could well be even faster than a “human” can do it because it can go on continuously without requiring a rest.

Now perhaps, dear reader, will understand why you will have to pay a fee for this kind of a software product that achieves so much for you. Plus, it is NOT an outrageous amount either for something that works so well to help you produce finished documents. I have tried a few others before but there’s no comparison between them and DRAGON HOME.

Yes, you are paying a fee to use DRAGON HOME but if you need it in a job, it certainly will pay for itself quickly as it helps you work so much better.

Have A Most Happy New Year!

It is that time of the year again, dear reader.  

I’m not going to talk about my medical situation in detail in this Blog. If you want to read everything about it, just go back to the beginning in this Blogsite when I first started writing about what happened to me from a mental and physical point of view and what medical action I took since then. 

Fortunately, for me, I have recovered my health as much as possible after suffering from a rare form of encephalitis that damaged certain parts of my brain. (Ex. short-term memory). 

Regretfully, I will never be able to forget about all of this and not think about it any longer. It will always be in my mind. After all, with this bizarre encounter that I had, I came within 2 or 3 days of dying!  

To be direct, I am much happier about how I have recovered. It is a true blessing for me. The medical people were great.  My family has been marvelous in all this time. My friends have done their best to help me recover too. With all the on-going support, I have done well in my “new” life that I am now experiencing. 

I wish everyone the happiest of holidays, however you choose to celebrate. May everyone have a wonderful New Year too!

Some More Stories For You

Brrr, it is cold out there.

Seriously, it is only December and yet we are getting so much cold weather. I saw weather predictions that claimed that we are not going to get a lot of snow but that we are going to get lots of very cold temperatures. Well, we did get lots of flurries but hardly any buildup in our area. However, I cannot believe that our winter temperatures have started off so low in the past. Something strange is going on.

I just had a problem with my PC device that I use when I go online. I do not believe it was due to the chilly weather but who knows.

It turns out that the battery backup system that I had with my computer completely seemed to have some problems because when power failed the computer desktop also failed and went completely dead. Normally, the battery backup system stays online for several minutes so that I can close off my PC and other devices so that they do not suffer from the outage.

I did have a company from which I wanted to buy a product. It was the company from which I purchased the device I already had in my PC system. However, when I called them and spoke to someone in their Customer Service Department, the cost to buy one of their products was extremely high and almost unaffordable. Well, not really that hard to buy but it did cost a lot of money.

I went to one of the computer dealers that I deal with now and asked them to make a suggestion about what I should buy. Amazingly, they suggested a pretty good alternative which was at a relatively low cost. Mind you, I had never heard about this manufacturer before but since they suggested it I assumed that it was a good value. By the way, if you want to know what Company it is, just drop me a note.

Accordingly, I purchased it and waited several days for it to be shipped to me. After I picked it up, I took it home and tied it into my electrical system so that the batteries inside it could be boosted. It took about eight or nine hours for that to happen. Then, with some concern, I tried to load it with a bunch of different computer products that depended on that system to provide backup power.

Without going into this in a lot of detail, one of the big problems right upfront was loading the new piece of equipment. Since the other one was located underneath my desk, I had to disconnect all of the product wiring that was attached to it and then attach it into the new one. I never expected it to be an easy task and it was not. You try to do things underneath your desk when it is close to a wall. Believe it or not, it was difficult pulling the old connections out of the existing unit. I guess they were stuck inside for so long that it was difficult for them to be separated. Nevertheless, it was eventually completed.

Then, power was put back on. Fingers were tightly crossed and my hope was that everything would actually work. At first, it did not. I guess I just did not start the system properly because the right buttons had to be pushed in the right order and for the right amount of time. I finally did it and, lo and behold, the starting light went on and everything worked absolutely properly.

I must say that everything seems quite fine. In fact, the speed of my computer connecting to various Internet websites seems to be going a lot faster than before. Perhaps this new computer device is assisting. I sure hope so.

In any event, everything seems to be going well so that I have time now to dictate some articles and then ship them off to my website for you to read. Here are some of them that I just completed for your reading pleasure.

A NOVEMBER WEATHER STORY

Yes, I know that I am not supposed to write a whole bunch of stories about the weather anymore. However, if there is an interesting one, then please forgive me if I decide to write it. Just take a look at what was written about our November weather:

“Since November 1st at Toronto International Airport (YYZ):

--9 days were 100% cloudy (no sun visible at all)

--22 days had an average cloud cover of 80% or more

--November 22nd was the only day cloud cover was below 50% (hope you enjoyed it!)

--1 entire hour of daylight was lost as we approach the winter solstice” (Brett Soderholm, The Weather Network, November 30, 2018) 

I am sure that the weather conditions here were just as similar and just as bad. As you know also, dear reader, the weather on December 1 in our area was just as cloudy.

I must say that with the temperature being so low, it is not all that troubling that outside was gloomy and I did not go for walks. I do hope though that the sun finally comes out and that it finally starts to shine around here.

Even if the temperature is low, I have some new clothes now that will allow me to go outside for a walk, even if it is a short one. It is a great way to keep myself in good shape.

WILL WINDSOR CHANGE

Gord Henderson wrote a very good column on December 1 in the Windsor Star: 

“Henderson: GM's Oshawa shutdown shows Windsor has to diversify — now”

To be honest, that has been my position for a very long time. I remember after I first moved here from Toronto, that I wrote some stories online about changes that I thought should be undertaken in Windsor.

I felt very strongly when I moved here that Windsor was a very vibrant place to live. Moreover, I also expected that there was terrific potential for growth there. Yes, Windsor did very well in the auto industry but I thought that the opportunities were available in other industrial areas as well.

I must admit that, after all of this time that I have lived here, I have never really seen anything grow significantly outside of the automobile industry. I have been very disappointed about that. Oh sure, everyone was doing well when times were good, but, when the automobile industry slowed down as it did several times since I have been here, things look very difficult for people residing in this area.

Seriously, wasn’t it very exciting here a very short time ago about how well the industry was going to do in our area! That changed didn’t it:

“If it can happen in Oshawa, home to GM for most of a century, it can happen anywhere, including Windsor.

That thought sent a chill down the mayor’s spine — reminding him of sleepless nights early in his first term, before Chrysler Canada committed to massive investments in its Windsor Assembly plant — and triggered a five-alarm sense of urgency on the need to accelerate the area’s diversification.”

Accordingly, our Mayor took this position:

“Dilkens, however, feels duty-bound to consider the worst that could happen, no matter how unlikely.”

He should at least be congratulated that he has recognized the problem. The question though is what he is going to do to try and solve it. Now that will be interesting to see what happens. In addition, with the new Council, it will be interesting as well to see if the new Members of Council are aggressive in what they want to see achieved and how quickly.

Winter Came Early This Year

I have to admit that I am not all that good a weather person. I really am not sure what our temperatures have been in the past around this time. However, I don’t remember such a cold outside these days as we are having now. Oh well, it is something that I’m experiencing now and I guess I just have to get used to it. I thought I had read somewhere else before that we’re going to have several years more of very cold weather like this. I just had better make sure that I have all the clothes that I need to protect me.

A short time ago I watched the funeral session of President George Bush on television. It did make me sad watching it but I wanted to see what people would say about him. I thought that he had been a great President in the US and I remember that I was very disappointed at the time that he was not re-elected. My biggest surprise, although I’m sure that you too probably read about it as well as I did, dear reader, was that one of the speakers at the ceremony was our ex-Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney.

It was remarkable to me that a Canadian was able to speak at the funeral of a US President in front of so many key people in the US. Oh sure, he was an important political person in this Country but the former US President had met so many important Governmental people from other countries over the years. However, it was our former Leader who spoke at his funeral. It was interesting to me because I did not know about it at all before but they were friends, I read in one of the articles, for about 30 years. Apparently, they met many times during that timeframe. Obviously, they had become very close.

I do not want to speak very much about the funeral ceremonies that I saw on television. It might be well worthwhile for you, dear reader, just to take a look to see what happened. Moreover, you might also want to take a look at how the various former US Presidential people got along with each other during the ceremonies because they were sitting beside each other.

Now let me write about some other subjects that are of interest to me.

SERIOUSLY, IS THIS ALL THAT REALLY HAPPENED

I probably should not write very much for you, dear reader, in this story. It just completely boggles my mind given what was said and how it troubles me so much more. In fact, you may wonder why this person was ever re-elected to office, especially the senior one in the City, given what you are about to read:

“We need to triple our efforts in economic development to fast-track the diversification of our economy.”

During the last four-year term of council, about 600 jobs have been created by attracting new employers like Kauth (auto parts), APAG (electronics), AAR (aircraft maintenance) and Quicken Loans announcing a tech centre in the downtown. But those 600 jobs are just a fraction of what would be needed to absorb the impact of a Windsor Assembly Plant closure, he stressed.” (Brian Cross, Windsor Star, December 3, 2018) 

I am completely stunned by this comment. Can you believe it… Only 600 jobs have been created in Windsor in over 4 years previously while Drew Dilkens was the Mayor. Only 600 jobs!!

If our efforts are tripled to meet Mayor Dilkens’ wish, it would seem to me that our numbers would now be 1800 new jobs that would be created. Oh well, that only means that a few thousand other CAW workers who lost their jobs if the plant was closed down would be unemployed since the number of new Mayor’s jobs to be created would be so low.

I am certain, dear reader, that you can understand how upset I am about what the Mayor has said. Does he have no idea what he should be doing to protect the City of Windsor and all of the surrounding suburbs? In my opinion, a number of Council members in Windsor have the duty to act promptly to salvage what may happen here. It may mean that they ignore the Mayor completely.

More importantly, it also means that we need Metropolitan Windsor set up immediately with a different person who will lead what happens in this entire area! Someone who will protect us from the mess that could happen otherwise.

ARE OUR HOSPITAL PLANS A MESS

Honestly, I am very disappointed about what is being proposed for a new Hospital in our area. I commented on it before so I do not have to repeat it all again in this posting.

As far as I am concerned, this comment suggests to me another reason that just having a single hospital in this area as is being proposed is an absolute disaster:

“An emergency department could still exist at the Ouellette Campus as part of the mega-hospital project, according to the head of Windsor Regional Hospital.” (Dave Battagello, Windsor Star, November 28, 2018) 

Duh! As far as I am concerned, this just confirms once again that just having one new hospital here alone will not work. Naturally, this is not pointed out or else everything set out to date will have to be scrapped.

Here is a comment by the Mayor that is most interesting:

“Absolutely, unequivocally, without a shadow of a doubt, emergency services will be delivered in our downtown core. They are not disappearing out of the core.

“The question is will they be delivered at the Grace site, will they be delivered at the Ouellette site, or will there be another site in the downtown core that is selected? That’s really where we’re at.”

Why he just can’t put forward the argument that this existing hospital is still required even if a new one is built far away from the downtown is beyond me. Instead, he mentions the different alternatives so that no matter what happens down the road he can claim a victory. 

Year End Is Coming

Yes, I know that we are less than a month away from the end of our year, 2018. There are lots of things to do during this time to end our year and to get ready for our new one.

As I am sure that you know, this is a difficult time-period for me that I am experiencing once again now. It is that time in 2014 when a disease that I had somehow picked up started coming out resulting in my near-death at year-end. If you want to read more about this, just go back to some of my earlier stories on my website.

No, it is not as troubling as before. Thank goodness. 

I have made a remarkable recovery since then after all of the efforts that I made. Oh sure, I have lost a very small amount of my resources, both physical and mental, as I recovered from this disease but I am still in pretty good shape these days. Nevertheless, there is nothing that I can do to forget about it all or even not to be troubled by it anymore. This is just not going to happen. What I can be pleased about is that I am not as concerned as before about my future.

I have to admit that I don’t know how other people act in situation similar to mine. Do they forget about everything because it is four years in the past? Alternatively, do they remember everything completely and experience it again? I don’t know the answer to it but I expect that some people are like me. They remember that there was a terrible action before but that they have recovered reasonably well since that time. It allows the person to live again as close to normally as possible.

Or that is what I’m saying given the date today. I’ll see what I experience as I again approach the day of the month when this all started to become very difficult for me. In the meantime, I better get back to writing some articles for you to read, dear reader.

ATTENDING A COUNCIL MEETING

Thanks to one of the writers on Facebook, I saw that the following can be used to watch a Council meeting or a Committee meeting in the City of Windsor from your home:

http://csg001-harmony.sliq.net/00310/Harmony/en/PowerBrowser/PowerBrowserV2/20181105/-1/4021#agenda_

Take a look at it because it will help you see what Council has done in matters that interest you. Of course, it also lets you know how well Members of Council act when doing their job.

Here’s a picture of what it lets you see. More importantly, you can hear quite well what is being said by the people in attendance at the meeting.

As you can tell, you can see not only a meeting that takes place at the time but one that was recorded in the past.

NEW BRIDGE BEING BUILT

In reading newspaper articles over the past while, it seems if the new Government bridge between Windsor and Detroit is going to start being built these days. Here is what is being done right now:

“Work has started,” said WDBA board chairman Dwight Duncan. “It’s not necessarily all visible. We have detailed drawings being done, managers being put in place. But within the next six months things will really start to progress.” (Dave Battagello, Windsor Star,November 23, 2018) 

Quite a big number of people will be hired eventually if this turns out to be true:

“More than 2,000 workers are expected to eventually have a direct hand working on the bridge project itself during the period of construction, scheduled to stretch into late 2024, the target date for the bridge to open to traffic.”

I have to admit that none of this makes much sense to me. Here’s what I mean by that written in a rather direct fashion. Will the Ambassador Bridge Company take any action to stop this from going on, for example by starting a lawsuit in Canada or the United States or both? This could take place for over a decade by the time it’s finished with a Supreme Court decision. 

Alternatively, since it seems rather quiet these days, could it be that the parties have arrived already at some kind of a deal that will be announced to help the Liberal Government around election time? It could help them get re-elected in exchange of some deal with the Bridge Company.

Who knows...I sure don’t!

LETTUCE TALK ABOUT THIS NOW

Oh no, here we go again. I have been through this before and was quite disappointed. Yes, I was told that there might be a problem with the romaine lettuce some time ago and I stopped eating it for a relatively long period of time. It just seemed to go on forever with no one really telling us what was wrong or if anything was found. Then, the whole negative process was stopped.

It is happening now one more time. However, here is what is being written in the Public Health Agency of Canada Notice:

“The Public Health Agency of Canada is collaborating with provincial public health partners, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Health Canada, as well as the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (U.S. CDC) and the United States Food and Drug Administration (U.S. FDA), to investigate an outbreak of E. coli infections in Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, and several U.S. states.

In Canada, based on the investigation findings to date, exposure to romaine lettuce has been identified as a source of the outbreak, but the cause of contamination has not been identified…

As the risk is ongoing, the Public Health Agency of Canada is advising individuals in Ontario, Quebec, and New Brunswick to avoid eating romaine lettuce and salad mixes containing romaine lettuce until more is known about the outbreak and the cause of contamination.”

At least this time around, I have some confidence about what is being looked at. Unfortunately though the cause is still unknown. That is quite scary because, even if everything is said soon to be all right about the lettuce, what happens in the future? Can the same thing happen all over again?

Of course it means once again that I cannot eat romaine lettuce and who knows once again how long that will be. For what it is worth, it just seems so strange to me that is always “romaine” lettuce that is at risk and not some other type of vegetable. I wonder if there’s a different way of growing that crop that causes these problems.

Regretfully, we have switched over to another vegetable, cabbage, to be our new salad product until there is a solution is arrived at. Soon I hope. Oh sure, I do like the cabbage salad but I need my favorite lettuce meal as soon as possible to feel even healthier again.

UPDATE:  I can eat romaine lettuce again.  But for how long, who knows.

Some More Comments

How fortunate for me that living in my condo unit works out so well. I have a number of activities that I perform during every week that keeps me occupied.

What this means is that I actually do help out as required to keep this unit well-organized. Moreover, I have a variety of activities that I do every day that do take up time to keep myself fit after the horrible health issues that I have experienced. Several days a week my wife and I go out shopping to make sure that we have all of the food that we require especially in these cold days.

Of course, there is the major task that I carry out as many times as I can. Naturally, I mean by that comment writing articles for this website, TecumsehCityBlog. This does take a considerable amount of time to carry out since I have to do research to get as much relevant information that I can before I start writing. Of course, actually writing something that has some value can be quite time-consuming as well.

No matter though. I really do enjoy what I'm doing. It forces me to keep on using my "brain" as the recovery from my horrific illness of the past. Just to show you exactly what I mean, here are some more stories that I hope you will find of interest.

MORE ELECTRICAL PROBLEMS

As you know, I have had several electrical problems at my new residence in Tecumseh in the past. To be honest, I don't think I experienced in Windsor all the difficulties I am experiencing now here in keeping my electrical power working all the time. I've had a number breakdowns here but, fortunately, they were fixed pretty quickly after I spoke to one of the senior Managers at the electrical firm, Joe Barile .

If you remember, the last time something like this happened took place not all that long ago when we lost our power for over three hours. That happened because the repair crew was out of town fixing an electrical problem in another County town and I expect that it took them close to an hour to come back here to do the repair work.

Well, here we go again! On a recent Saturday, we had two outages. We had one around 6 o'clock in the morning and then around 11:30 later on in the day. The outages themselves were very brief: about two seconds for the first one and then around one second for the second one. Fortunately, I did not have to change all of the electrical clocks in the house to correct the times. I guess the outage was not long enough to require that. 

Unfortunately, my PC, which was on at each of the times, crashed completely and had to be restarted to work again. Fortunately, it still worked properly after starting up again. Just so you know, the computer had just been returned to my home after repair work was done on it because it totally and completely crashed and key elements of it had to be replaced. This happened as an upgrade to Windows took place and while trying to go through it. The PC crashed during the downloading of the new files, never worked at all again and totally failed.

I did not contact the power company after the first outage because I was hoping that everything was all right. After the second outage, I did contact them because of what might happen again.

Fortunately, I received a comment back telling me that work was to be undertaken right away to find out what happened. Based on what took place before, I expect that once it was known what caused the problem, it would be repaired right away.

If something extraordinary happens, I certainly will let you know what took place. I'm just hoping that everything is solved quickly.

UPDATE

Yes, it seems extraordinary but it happened! I received an email on Monday morning at 9:39 AM telling me that everything was fixed up! Here is part of what was said to me in that email:

“Hydro One has now advised that it was a blown underground cable in their system (south of the Hiram Walker warehouses) which caused the first trip and their troubleshooting to do repair caused the other two. 

06:05 M25 A/R

09:09 M25 A/R

11:26 M25 A/R

Despite the annoyance, the good news is that there is a definitive event which has been determined to be the root cause of the issue this past Saturday morning.”

It makes me feel quite happy that this was done so quickly. Otherwise, I would be very uncomfortable being on my PC fearing that it could come down at any time.

Thanks again to Joe Barile, General Manager of Essex Powerlines Corporation for achieving such a good solution so quickly!

JUST A BIT MORE ABOUT THE WEATHER

It just seems too early for me. I cannot believe how cold it is at this time of the year. Moreover, we are also getting some snow although we are lucky that we don't see a lot of snow left on the ground that needs shoveling or plowing.

Believe it or not, it was only until relatively recently over only the last couple of years that I really understood what the weather was like at this time of the year. All those years before I was stuck working in an office and hardly went outside at all. Not these days! I can go outside anytime I want given my new status in life.

It is funny though. While I have the opportunity to go outside at any time, the low temperature means that I generally stay inside my condo unit to keep warm. I'm not that foolish to go out when temperatures are around 0°C or even below that. Well, I should not say that exactly. I may try to go out when it is sunny and not too windy because I did buy some nice earmuffs that should keep my delicate ears warm. Over the last couple of years, I could not find anything like this to buy so I stayed inside my unit until near spring. I will experiment with these new earmuffs and see how well I do when I go for a short stroll. I'll definitely let you know the results!

What is also somewhat peculiar is that I saw some recent weather forecasts that predicted that we would not see very many snowfalls this winter in our area, especially at this time of the year. 

Regretfully, what did I see over the last few days was a huge amount of snowfall dropping out of the sky. How lucky we were that, in fact, the temperatures were above the freezing point as the snow was coming down or else a lot of plowing would have had to be done. If you can recall, a lot of snow fell over good number of hours on each occasion. Luckily, there were no big piles of snow left that had to be shoveled away.

I still have my fingers crossed that the Weather Man is accurate in what he said would happen this year but who knows.

DRAGON DICTATE SOFTWARE

I will talk about this in more detail later on but my PC crashed completely the other day and I had to have it completely fixed up because everything was lost on my system. And I do mean everything, especially all of my software products.

Again I will explain it later on but one of the products I was able to get back was my Dragon Dictate Software system. The Dragon Dictate software system that I was using on my home Computer until recently was many years older and out of date now. I was able to get a copy of the most recent update of the software from the Customer Service Department of the owner of the Product.

I have just started using the newer version and will give a report on my opinion of it once I have used it for a proper length of time.